Thursday, August 25, 2011

Everybody's Being A Dick Thursday

This is a direct quote from a memo to Gamestop employees:Please immediately remove and discard the On Live coupon from all regular PC versions of Deus Ex: Revolutions. Our desire is to not have this coupon go to any customers after this announcement.

Well played, Gamestop. Since you're already acting like complete dicks by opening new product, putting the contents behind the counter, then "reconstituting" it when I want to buy a new copy, why not leverage your dickish way and just start throwing shit away whenever you feel like it?

Let's come clean here. Gamestop doesn't gut new copies to help "reduce theft in stores." That is complete and total bullshit. They do it because it makes a new copy look exactly like a used one, and if it's the same thing, why not buy the used one? It's the most transparent ploy ever, and what makes it even more infuriating is that it works.

That was yesterday.

Today, Gamestop has pulled the PC version entirely from its shelves.

Here's the thing. Square Enix didn't tell Gamestop that the coupon was included. That's not correct. Leave it to Gamestop, though, to respond like such asshats that it turns them into the bad guys. To take something potentially of value out of a new game package and not tell the customer is heinous.

Do you know what I did when Gamestop bought Impulse? I deleted Impulse.

Oh, and the capital "S" in Gamestop? I pulled it out of the word, and it won't be distributed to readers. You lost your big S, bitches.

Okay, enough about Gamestop. Let's move on to Jay Wilson, Diablo 3 Game Director. In a recent interview with PC gamer, he answered questions about the total lack of off-line mode and violated the cardinal rule of interviews: don't be a dick.

Here's how Wilson responded when he was asked what people should do if they don't have a stable Internet connection:Erm… upgrade the wiring in his house? I mean, in this day and age the notion that there’s this a whole vast majority of players out there that don’t have online connectivity – this doesn’t really fly any more.

Classy. Wait, he's just getting started:So for us we’ve always viewed it as an online game – the game’s not really being played right if it’s not online, so when we have that specific question of why are we allowing it? Because that’s the best experience, why would you want it any other way?

Thank you for telling me how I should play games. What a time-saver!

Next, he takes a trip to Entirely Not the Point Town:An online experience is what we want to provide for this game. Every choice you make is going to omit some part of the audience. Some people don’t like fantasy games, so should we have not made Diablo a fantasy game, because some people don’t like that? Some people don’t like barbarians. Should we not have put a barbarian in the game because some people don’t like it?

Awesome. Thanks for saving me the $60 I would've spent buying your game, Jay. I can spend that money on highly-deserving indie projects made by people who aren't dicks.

Lastly, let's talk about Apple.

Apple has been suing the hell out of Android phone/tablet manufacturers because Google is kicking their ass. So they're claiming that other companies--Samsung in particular--have "copied" their designs.